UK Premiere

Official Selection Feature

Short Synopsis:

Lisbon… Six friends meet every evening in a basement to make music. During the daytime, however, there are no rehearsals for what life brings us. Each endeavour leaves its mark. They are twenty-somethings and do not want to be alone."

Review:

In Lisbon 6 twenty-something friends meet every evening to rehearse their band. During the day, each member lives a very different life, and similar events leave their marks in different ways. Broken into a segment for each member, every part of the film tells a different story in a different style – because each segment is shot by a different director.

Drawing on the finest Portuguese short filmmakers, What’s New About Love? shares some structural features with portmanteau films such as Magnolia or Paris Je T’aime, but treads an original line between them. Based heavily on rock music, it features some of the best indie Portuguese bands, as well as contributions from America rockers The Walkmen.

With each section bringing a different approach to the table there is surely something for fans of every film style in this film. Baptista’s part brings a handheld dynamic to a courtship, whilst Alves is more formal with his piece on gay cruising and Santos conveys a detached atmospheric in his take on loss. As an exploration of style and form, contained within an overarching story, this is an inventive piece of filmmaking, successfully pulled of by the young directing talent.